Kobe Bryant isn’t particularly pleased with the events of the past few days. Not only did the Lakers’ attempt to wrangle Chris Paul from the Hornets fall apart late Saturday night, but the team turned around and traded Lamar Odom—the Swiss-army staple of the Lakers’ two most recent championships—to Dallas. Bad enough that the team dumped a guy Bryant liked in the locker room and on the court, but to send him to the defending champs, the team that swept the Lakers from the postseason last year?

“Especially to them,” Bryant told reporters on Sunday. “We were supposed to come back and get them back.”

In return for Odom, the Lakers basically got a lottery ticket—and it is a lottery they had better find a way to win.

L.A. now has a trade exception, which it can use in a potential deal for Magic center Dwight Howard. Howard has been granted a chance to speak with three teams (the Nets, Lakers and Mavericks), though the chances of Dallas making a strong enough push for Howard are slim. The Bulls are also interested in teaming Howard with his good friend Derrick Rose, though they have not gotten a guarantee that Howard would sign an extension.

If the bidding comes down to the Lakers and the Nets, it’s advantage L.A., even in the wake of Howard’s request to be traded to the Nets. The Lakers are Howard’s preferred destination and have been all along. He would be willing to sign long term with the Nets and team-up with point guard Deron Williams, but New Jersey would likely require a third team to put together the assets required to get Howard, while the Lakers now have the cap relief (the trade exception) and the key player (Andrew Bynum) to get Orlando to make a deal.

But, as we’ve seen with just about every attempted transaction around the NBA in the past week, there are complications. For one thing, the Magic are going to ask the Lakers for an awful lot in return for Howard—namely, Pau Gasol and Bynum. That’s a steep price, of course, and one report says L.A. won't agree to send both of those big men to Orlando.

But don’t look for Orlando to be in the same kind of hurry to deal Howard that the Hornets were in to trade Paul. Orlando has already been knocked sideways by the departure of one Hall of Fame big man (Shaquille O’Neal, who left as a free agent, with nothing in return, in 1996) and they’re going to get all they can for this one. The Magic saw how the Nuggets patiently developed a market for Carmelo Anthony last season, and a league source said, “If they have to wait a little while to get the right deal, they would. If it hurts them some this season, so what? They have the whole future of the franchise to worry about.”

There is also the matter of tampering charges against at least one team competing with the Lakers for Howard that allegedly had contact with the big man. It has been reported that Howard met with Nets owner Mikhail Prokhorov and general manager Billy King before the Magic granted such permission, and though Howard and King have denied that meeting ever took place, the Nets could still face a tampering charge. That figures to gum up the works in terms of the Magic’s next move with Howard.

For the Lakers, this means there will be either an excruciating decision or an excruciating wait for Howard. They can clear out the cupboard by trading Gasol and Bynum, a move they really can’t make in the wake of dumping Odom. Or they can try to wait out the Magic and see if the asking price for Howard drops. But that could leave the Lakers waiting until close to the March 15 trade deadline, and that is just too long for a 33-year-old Bryant, or anyone else in Lakerland.

Since that sweep at the hands of Dallas, the Lakers have seen coach Phil Jackson retire, hired coach Mike Brown without consulting Bryant, lost key reserve Shannon Brown, signed Jason Kapono (who averaged 0.7 points in 24 games last year), had their attempt to nab Paul collapse and, now, have given away Odom. It hasn’t been a banner half-year for the Lakers, and it’s easy to sense that Bryant is getting grouchy.

He will be even grouchier if the Howard machinations do not pan out. There doesn’t seem to be a Plan B in place for the Lakers. They could revisit the Paul conversation. They could attempt to pluck point guard Steve Nash—an impending free agent—from the Suns, but Phoenix has given every indication that the team intends to let Nash play out his contract and hit free agency next summer, and Nash isn’t requesting a trade. They could use the exception to troll for spare parts (O.J. Mayo, perhaps) near the trade deadline.

None of these options are all that appealing for the Lakers. And certainly not for Bryant. Now, for L.A., it’s all-or-nothing when it comes to Howard.